


Quiet Defiance

by casey270



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mention of Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 03:44:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casey270/pseuds/casey270
Summary: Cages don't always have bars.for my H/C prompt: Cages





	Quiet Defiance

He keeps her locked in her rooms, this husband of hers. Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, may be a fool in some things, but not in this. He knows that she would run to the north if given the chance, to live as Erik would have lived. She found the strength and beauty and gentleness that she knew love could be, but it was not with her husband, the man that church and state had bound her to. She found all the best of life with her Dane, the man that her family and countrymen consider a savage, a godless heathen. Her husband knows she would leave if she could, so he keeps her in a cage fit for a princess. 

She has servants and food and silks and satins befitting her position. She has all the trappings of royalty, but none of the power. Everything she could want is provided to her, except her freedom. Except the love she found with Erik. 

Æthelflæd can still remember the way those hands that had been strong enough to wield a sword and push it clear through a man’s body had held the gentility of the ages as they stroked the skin of her thighs. She can recall the tenderness and reverence he showed as he entered her, not using her to gain his own pleasure as Æthelred had done, but using his own body to worship the precious gift he saw in her. She remembered the look in his eyes that told her she held more worth than all the treasure any ransom could bring. 

Erik had been willing to give up his very life to protect her. The least she can do now is to willingly give up her freedom in order to protect the one small part of him that still lives: the babe in her womb. 

Æthelflæd and Æthelred both know who fathered the child she carries, even though they’ve never spoken of it and likely never will. For Æthelred, to talk of it would be tantamount to admitting that he’d been cuckolded. That’s an indignity she knows he’s not willing to suffer publicly, not even in front of her. He will go on pretending to the world that the child she can feel growing inside is his own heir, entitled to all that guarantees.

Her father is King, her husband a Lord and Elderman. This child shall know all the benefits of royalty, even though Æthelflæd knows that it will be half Saxon, half Dane. Male or female, it will represent the future of England, the true Briton. She will make sure that the child is raised with as little influence from and contact with Æthelred as possible. She’ll make sure that she teaches it the same joy of life and living that she saw in Erik. She’ll teach it the unselfish nature she valued in its true father. 

Most of all, she’ll teach it that love, itself, is to be cherished above all things, that even a small time spent in perfect love is enough to sustain a person through a lifetime of duty. There is some small satisfaction in knowing that her husband no longer comes to her in the night, forcing himself on her. He hasn’t approached her that way since he saw her kill the man who took the life of her lover. Æthelflæd thinks he’s afraid of her anger now, but not afraid enough to allow her freedom. 

For now, she wraps herself in the comfort of knowing the child she carries will be greater than either she or Æthelred, and it’s enough to sustain her.


End file.
